Friday, June 4, 2010

Does Runequest really cause this amount of amputations? There were over a half dozen plus one PC getting a leg smashed. Luckily the PC had Healing 6 but still. The rule states that if a limb take more than 6 over the amount of hit point it is severed or irrevocably crippled. For example arm with 4 hit points will be severed if it takes 10 points of damage. Part of this was due that one of the players had a pole ax doing 3d6 or so damage.

My second question is that when you fire a missle weapons what defense the target gets? I know that if the target moves the skill is reduced by 1/4 and if the target is actively dodging the skill is reduced by a further 1/2. So moving and doding mens 1/4 skill.

Also I am not getting how movement and strike ranks work. I guess is boils down to what determines who moves when when they are not engaged. Plus how do you get out of melee if you want to run away? Rather are their any penalities for moving out of melee. Or moving from one melee to another (provided you only move half your move).

4 comments:

Yes, limbs go flying in RQ. Lately I've been using HP = SIZ + CON/2 + POW/4 which dramatically reduces the flying limbs (but big attacks will still send them flying). I also use HP * 0.3 per location for head, arms, and legs, HP * 0.4 for chest and abdomen (HP * 0.25 for tails). Those multipliers might be from RQ3.

Definitely with the original rules you absolutely need someone with Heal 6 in the party or the death rate will be high. Of course Heal 6 doesn't help when the head, chest, or abdomen is hit this hard...

Hmm, I've never used those modifiers to missile skill.

The way I handle movement and strike ranks is that your movement starts at your DEX strike rank. Each hex moves costs one strike rank, which delays any attack at the end of the movement. So attack happens at DEX SR + hexes moved + SIZ SR. I allow the 5 SR for "readying" a weapon to be combined with movement.

I haven't really imposed any penalties on disengaging. Of course your opponent can chase you.

Sometimes strike ranks can get wonky. If they cause something to happen that really doesn't make sense it's probably time to make a spot ruling.

I also use the rules allowing delay of attack by 1 SR to change hit location roll by 1. I allow a max of 4 SR of delay. Optionally, you can choose to strike at SR 12 (no movement allowed) and 1/2 attack to pick location. This provides a nice tactical choice and seems to work well. The half attack prevents the slowest opponent from just choosing location. The 4 SR maximum prevents fast opponents from having too much choice of location (also means that not all moderately fast people will just choose to attack at SR 12 with whatever hit location mod results). My intelligent monsters will make use of these tactics.

One final thing I started to do was require players to use a D12 set in front of them to indicate when their next significant action would occur. That really sped up SR counts. When an NPC attacks, I make it clear what SR it is, this allows the players to adjust their hit location modification delay tactics (of course based on the information from this round, the NPC may choose a different delay for next round himself...).

Amputations, yes. This is a quirk in the RQ2 rules which a lot of people find unsatisfactory. Hey, they're old rules. Try BRP or MRQII, both of which (in different ways) address many of the problems of creaky old RQ2.

Sheesh, there's your problem! You're trying to use rules from the 1970's! Get with the times, man! ; P

Forgive me, but some of these comments bother me. YES! Amputations and deaths are common in RQ. It reflects real HTH combat with sharp weapons and pointy weapons. Combat is nasty business, and should be avoided. Glorantha is a brutal world, but that's what makes it so wonderful and rewarding when you finally get a character who has a decent parry, decent defense, and some good battle magic, enough so that THEY are the ones causing amputations and deaths from shock. I mean, unless you buy into the "everybody gets a trophy" approach to roleplaying you see all too often in modern day games (which I don't), then I don't see the system as outdated or at all flawed. In fact, the lack of character classes, experience points, and levels make it a much more fun and realistic game to play. Do characters die regularly? Absolutely! As they should if they're neophytes going out and doing battle in an extremely dangerous world.

About the only "house-rules" I used were making certain the characters played had heroic potential, and occasionally allowing for previous experience (as per the appendix). It's a dark, dangerous world, and, uh, unless it's through an NPC, how in the world did someone get healing 6 so quickly??? That's one expensive spell!!!

And ditching strike ranks? For a random initiative roll??? WTF!?! Size and Dex are built into the SR system, and if you've ever done any SCA action, you'd know it IS harder, MUCH harder, for an uncoordinated small person wielding a dagger (or other short weapon) to get in a legitimate attack on someone with a long spear or poleaxe. SRs are one of the reasons I LOVE the RQ system, and hate AD&D or any game which doesn't take things like size and weapon length into account in HTH combat.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.